Las Vegas Weekly

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Kristen Peterson

Wed, Feb 10, 2010 (11:52 a.m.)

I’ve long wanted to see the Babes in Sin burlesque troupe. Not just for their naughty vintage-style bump ’n’ grind and their reputation for Goth theatrics/performance art, but also because these girls are, well, deliciously curvaceous.

No stick-thin, predictable blondes with spray tans and boob jobs here. They have bellies that shake, bums that bounce and bosoms that hang and swing, rather than protrude like they’ve been stuffed and mounted.

They strut to choreographed tease, and flaunt personalities that make them the antithesis of Vegas homogeny.

Naturally, they’re here at the opening of Laurenn McCubbin’s art exhibit, Speaking to Las Vegas in the Language of Las Vegas, which looks at facets of our sex industry, including the idea of what McCubbin calls “NASCAR sex”—all-American, mostly white-girl, Disneyfied.

At McCubbin’s opening at UNLV’s Grant Hall Gallery, we get another option as the Babes saunter in, strike a pose and cue the music—local musician Thom Chrastka’s version of “Big Spender.”

Ceremoniously underdressed in nude panties, nude bras and nude fishnet stockings, they assert their dominant sexuality, disrobing on cue and shaking their goods in front of our cameras and cell phones. Glitter flies from their bosoms.

Just when we think we’ve had all our fun, they rip open their corsets to unleash entrails of sequined ribbon that spill from their bellies; they swing their intestines like boas. The theatrical zeal continues as red wine rolls like blood down their chins and onto their chests. The audience of 50 or so roars.

It’s vaudeville. It’s camp. It’s sexy, funny and creative. Too bad Las Vegas, which tries to sell itself as racy, doesn’t have more of this.

Clarification: After this story appeared, the reporter was contacted by a woman who identified herself as a member of the Babes in Sin burlesque troupe. She stated that the group performing the evening of this art opening was not the Babes in Sin; that only three of the four dancers were Babes in Sin dancers; and that the show "would have not been an appropriate Babes in Sin performance."

However, according to the reporter, one of the dancers performing in the troupe that night said the group was Babes in Sin, and that they all danced independently and would like to perform more often as Babes in Sin.